


for family

by Echo (Lyrecho)



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Facts Established In Canon Mean Nothing Here, Gen, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Rantaro Backstory, Rantaro-centric, Trans Male Character, Virtual Reality, headcanons abound, playing loose with canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-22 03:03:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12472020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrecho/pseuds/Echo
Summary: "I'm not a suspicious guy, I swear."Those words feel familiar when Rantaro says them - he's not sure why. The girl in front of him raises a brow at his words, clearly sceptical, and he's sure he doesn't knowherat all, even if this entire situation is the very definition of unsettling deja vu.The fact that he can't recognise her is relieving, to be honest. It just solidifies the idea in his head that something is very,verywrong.(Rantaro Amami, through the years.)|Tumblr||Twitter|





	for family

Rantaro Amami is fourteen years old and lying on the floor of his cousin's bedroom the first time Danganronpa ever becomes something more to him than just the hottest show on TV each season it airs.

Akane's grinning down at him wolfishly from her bed as he blinks, processing her words. She's four years older than him, just shy of her nineteenth birthday, but they've always pretty much been as close as siblings, given that Rantaro is an only child and all of her actual siblings are at least a decade younger than her.

"...Does your mother know?" He asks, eventually, when it becomes clear that she's waiting - fairly impatiently - for his response.

"Nah," she says, and Rantaro thinks of how tired Aunt Yuriko had looked when she'd opened up her front door to him and his mother, just before he'd been shooed off to Akane's room. "If I actually get in, I'll tell her, but until then, well." She shrugs, but he understands.

"Danganronpa, huh?" He grins, and the mood lightens. She laughs.

"You probably think I'm an idiot, right?" She says, and he shrugs. "Oh please, I can feel your judgement." She rolls over onto her back, and then her face is hanging off of the edge of her bed, her upside down eyes meeting his as their foreheads brush. "You're always so stoic and cool, Ran. So logical. You don't like me doing this at all."

Rantaro blinks as strands of her dark hair fall into his eyes. "I don't," he says, because that's the truth, and the motto of their family can basically be boiled down to _honesty is the best policy_. "But it's got nothing to do with me, so it's not like my opinion matters."

Akane's frown could send hardened dictator's to their knees, weeping. "Well, you've got that wrong," she says. "On _both_ counts."

"Practicing your trial lines already?" He asks lightly, and she reaches down to smack his shoulder. "I'd go for something a little more original, personally."

Akane rolls her eyes, but even though she's relaxed - accepting his own brand of dry sarcasm for the extended olive branch it's meant as - she doesn't drop the subject. "Hey," she says seriously, all joking having melted out of her voice, and Rantaro looks up to see that her gaze is turned away from him; looking directly above at the ceiling. "You know that this is completely safe, right? I mean, even if I get in - and that's a big _if_ , to be honest - I'm going to be fine." Even if he can't see her face, he can hear the grin in her tone. "It may look real, but that doesn't change the fact that it's just a simulation."

Rantaro nods. "I know," he says, thinking about the special that had aired a few months back of last season's winners and the rest of their 'class' reuniting for the first time in a public appearance since their game - they'd all, very clearly, been alive, and quite well.

 _Physically_.

It's more the mental aspect that has Rantaro worried.

"They'll mess with your head," he reminds her. "Your memories."

"Aww, are you worried I'll forget about you, my favourite little cousin?" Akane's tone is teasing, but he doesn't laugh.

"I _know_ you will," he says quietly, and she apparently doesn't have a response to that, because she falls silent.

"Hey," she says, and her voice is soft, warm - like Akane herself, when she isn't too preoccupied with being the most abrasive person in the entire universe. "Remember that cheap ass Monokuma plushie I won at a summer festival when we were kids?"

"Yeah?"

A moment of silence, where all he can hear is Akane's breathing above him. "We wore that poor bear down to threads and no stuffing," she huffs out a soft laugh. "Remember how we did that, Ran?"

"...playing pretend," he says reluctantly. "Playing Danganronpa."

Akane nods, and the movement makes her blankets rustle. "You liked being the detective type most," she recalls. "The helper."

"It worked to play second string to you and your strong headed protagonist tendencies," Rantaro says, and despite himself, there's a smile playing about his lips.

Akane sees it, and pounces. "How can something that makes you smile like that be bad?" She asks, and his smile dies.

Oof. A critical hit, with massive damage. If he was actually in a trial here, he wasn't sure whether or not his argument would hold water after such a masterful counter as that.

Akane scoffs, and after a brief moment of panic that his cousin was an as-until-that-moment undiscovered mind reader, he realises that he'd spoken aloud.

He blushes, and bites at his lip to physically lock away any more words that want to claw their way out of his throat without his express permission.

Akane's laying on her stomach now, propped up on her elbows, and her expression as she looks down at him is almost unbearably fond. There's a deep, genuine love there that he can't stand to look at for too long, so he doesn't, and ignores the fact that the tears welling up in his eyes would still be visible to Akane even if _he_ closes his gaze to them.

"Rantaro," Akane says. "Never change, okay?"

-x-

After that night, Rantaro is almost convinced that there's nothing to worry about. The next season of Danganronpa is airing soon, and with no words of confirmation or celebration from Akane, he can only presume that his cousin's application wasn't accepted.

He's relieved, even if he'll never mention it to Akane. She'll probably know, anyway. She can read people - particularly him - like that. Nevertheless, this is something that she wanted, something that she hoped for, and he resolves to pull on an appropriate expression of consolation the next time they meet, even if she will - almost undoubtedly - see through it.

At least, he is until he and his mother are sitting down to eat dinner one evening, and the phone rings.

Most people don't have landlines these days. Hell, most people don't even have _phones_ \- just implants or practically microscopic devices that act as one and do about a billion other things. Apparently, even before the Tragedy had happened all those long, long years ago, corded phones had been dated.

Well, it wasn't like they could afford anything else - but since most people communicated solely through apps that required up to date technology these days, there were realistically very few people who could actually be calling their house.

Later, Rantaro would know _exactly_ what the chill that had travelled down his spine meant, but in the moment he simply dismisses it - it's not like he's psychic or anything, and while he has good instincts, what the hell kind of danger can he pick up from an _unanswered phone call?_ He shakes his head, and starts to cut up his steak as his mother frowns, and stands from the table to go answer the call.

"Hello?" He hears her say, and then nothing.

And then she gasps, a retching, choking noise that sticks and gets trapped in her throat, and Rantaro is pushing his chair back and sprinting for the kitchen before he even really registers he's moving at all.

"Mum?" He asks hesitantly, hovering in the kitchen doorway. He flicks his gaze over the room, taking in the scene - how his mother clutches the phone to her tight, her knuckles bleached as white as the rest of her; pale and sweating - as she whirls to look at him, her eyes meeting his but not really _looking_ at him.

"It's your aunt," she says unsteadily, looking as if her legs are going to collapse beneath her any second. Rantaro hastily steadies her, making sure she's got a good grip on the counter even as his stomach sinks, mind a hissing field of blank white noise and screaming static. "Akane -" she cuts herself off around a sob, but Rantaro already knows.

"Right," he says blankly. He doesn't feel his lips move. He just feels - detached. "Give me a sec, okay?"

He barely registers her weak nod or the hysterics of Aunt Yuriko echoing through the phone she holds clutched to her chest as he makes his way to the lounge room, and switches on the television.

It's the first night of the newest season, after all.

He knows exactly where he'll find Akane.

-x-

The weirdest thing about seeing his cousin on TV isn't the fact that he's seeing her on TV, or the fact that she had completely lied to him about telling her mother what she was planning, or even the fact that she had apparently landed the lead role for this season - she had always been the protagonist type, so for her to be Danganronpa's first female lead in over a decade absolutely isn't a surprise.

No, the weirdest thing is the _hair_.

It's a bit of a Danganronpa tradition, he supposes - weird hair, weird people, weird aesthetics. It's practically retro, given that they're trying to emulate that first _real_ killing game that Junko Enoshima had run amidst the Tragedy.

(The world had some...weird ways of recovering from the Tragedy's aftermath. A fake reality show based off of one of the biggest events from that era of history is quite possibly one of the least alarming of them, even if the sheer length of its run is mind boggling. It's not like anyone who lived through the Tragedy is still alive now - not even their grandkids, or hell, their _great grandkids_.)

But Akane's hair...it isn't _weird_ , per se. It's just... not _her_.

Well, nothing about the character calling herself Akane Amami, Ultimate Beautician, is his cousin, not really. Her smiles are off, her laughter is off, and the sashay in her walk _definitely_ wasn't there in real life.

But. Her _hair_. It's. It's really off, to the point that whenever she's on screen it is where his eyes are automatically drawn.

It's red, _bright_ crimson, and while Rantaro can usually appreciate the little jokes Danganronpa plays with its cast's names and talents, this particular one has him grimacing. He's not sure if he's doing so on the behalf of his cousin, brainwashed into believing a life that she's never lived since she can't do it for herself, or simply because it's lazy writing.

On the screen, Akane is laughing, her ruby hair bouncing with the movement. _"Relax, Shiori-tan,"_ she says to the timid girl weeping by her side, and Rantaro wonders just how his cousin is going to react to watching her own season back when it's over - would she have comforted Shiori Haruka, 'Ultimate Ice Dancer,' if she had come across her crying? Probably. Would she have called her 'Shiori-tan?'

...no. Definitely not.

But as weird, bizarre, and - though he hates to admit it - _amusing_ watching his cousin act so out of character has been, he really hopes that she'll manage to get her hope-filled-protaganist powers working to calm Haruka-san down fast, so he can see the rest of the cast and get a feel for what, exactly, Akane will be up against over the next month or so - after all, for the first episode, the audience is going in just as blind as the brainwashed cast themselves. As the protagonist, the cameras will be following her every movement, tracking her and her alone until at least the 'entrance ceremony.' That's how it's been for as long as Rantaro can remember, and given how they've already started this season, he can't see them changing this formula anytime soon.

Haruka, though - she doesn't seem like the 'helper' type. That she was the one to wake up with Akane...it says something, even if he's not sure exactly what. First victim, maybe? Even _if_ that trope is overplayed - there's only so many times you can play a game with the same setup and rules before you have to repeat a few moves.

He shakes his head - what is he _thinking_? Getting wrapped up in his own thoughts while watching like he always used to, like he's just some spectator - he _isn't_. Not this time, not when it's Akane that's gone and signed herself up for this mess.

He sighs, and settles in for the long haul.

-x-

The building they’re in turns out to be an old museum – Danganronpa is getting more and more eclectic with their settings each season. With two seasons airing each year – about six months apart – they need to try and bring in some fresh new gimmick as often as possible to keep things interesting.

Rantaro isn’t quite sure what the idea behind the museum is, beyond a vague connection to the academic idea of a ‘killing school life,’ but he doesn’t have long to muse on it – on screen, Haruka screams as they encounter their first new classmate, and Akane moves in front of her, suspicion in her gaze.

_“Who are you?”_

_“Whoa, whoa, hey!”_ The boy holds his hands up in the universal gesture of ‘I mean you no harm.’ _“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you!”_ A nervous grin. _“So, um – do you guys have any idea why we’re here?”_

Slowly, Akane shakes her head. _“Who are you?”_ She repeats.

 _“I’m Yuriya Daiki, the Ultimate Architect!”_ His grin is less nervous as Akane and Haruka return the introductions.

 _“Three Ultimates,”_ Akane muses, one finger on her lip and head tilted in a tic she had never had in real life. _“What reason could we all be here for? Especially since we don’t remember how we got here at all.”_

 _“U-um,”_ Haruka speaks up. _“Do you suppose – do you think the three of us are the only ones here?”_

Akane shakes her head. _“I doubt it,”_ she says. _“If whoever brought us here went to the effort of gathering three Ultimates, I can’t imagine they would stop there.”_ A look of determination flickers to life on her face, and she balls both her hands into fists. _“Come on,”_ she says, and a familiar tune begins to play over the audio from the stream. _“Let’s go find the rest.”_

And with that, the screen fades to black for an ad break.

Rantaro breathes in deep, and out slow. His mother has grown quiet in the kitchen, and he’s not sure if his aunt is still on the other end of the phone line or not.

“Mum?” He says, and he hears a rustle from the kitchen as he starts to walk over there from the lounge. When he enters the room, she’s pushed herself to her feet – the noises he heard must have been her moving. “Are you okay?” He asks.

She shakes her head – not a negation, but simply a movement to convey how at a loss she is. “Yuriko is hysterical,” she says. “I know there’s no real danger from Akane participating in that show, but that doesn’t change the fact that it feels…” she trails off, but Rantaro can understand; he already pretty much knows, just from feeling the same way.

“Should we go see Aunt Yuriko?” He asks, and his mother nods.

“I think that would be for the best,” she says. “She’ll need us to support her throughout this, until Akane comes home.”

-x-

Akane wins, just a little under two months later.

Rantaro's not surprised - of course she won. She was the protagonist - they always win.

He and his mother have been spending more time at Aunt Yuriko's house than their own during the game, since she could barely tear herself away from the TV for more than five minutes at a time to take care of her household. Rantaro can't blame her - he pretty much feels the same way. Still, even if Akane is his favourite cousin, she isn’t his only one, so he spends those two months playing the part of a babysitter while his mother spends most of her time consoling her sister.

When the final trial airs and Akane triumphs against her Mastermind – Shiori Haruka, both Akane’s first friend and the first victim, which, in hindsight, is not that terribly big of a surprise – Rantaro feels something in him relax, and the air around the entire house lightens.

“This means Akanee is coming home soon, right?” Hideki’s eyes meet his, filled with a sort of confusion that say he isn’t sure why his biggest sister had left in the first place, and Rantaro smiles.

“Absolutely,” he says, and doesn’t mention that soon is relative. “I’m going to see her tomorrow – do you want me to give her anything?”

With that, all of his littlest cousins are running off with crayons, card, craft glue and glitter to make Akane the best ‘get well soon’ card they possibly can. Rantaro sighs, and resigns himself to an afternoon of scrubbing glue and glitter off of every surface in the house.

Once they’re out of sight, his smile fades, a little. He wasn’t _lying_ to them – Akane really was going to be home soon – but he wasn’t being entirely truthful, either.

It’s standard practice, after all – once you’re out of the killing game, winner or no, simulation or not, you’ve gone through trauma. Getting your own original personality and memories back can dilute the ‘in game’ memories, apparently, and most previous Danganronpa stars live their lives completely normally – but that doesn’t change the fact that the moment you first wake up, you’ll be disoriented. Confused. Probably more than a little angry, even if you were the one to sign away your consent prior to the game’s start.

So, Team Danganronpa had a team of dedicated therapists within their ranks – Akane would be kept at the Team’s headquarters until they deemed her safe to release.

She wasn’t a prisoner, though, so they still allowed visitors and brief trips to the outside world when escorted. Technically, Akane’s first of kin – her mother, Aunt Yuriko – should be the one to get first visitation rights, but Akane had specifically requested that Rantaro was the one to come first, and that he came alone.

Aunt Yuriko had wanted to argue, but the therapist assigned to Akane had put her foot down.

 _“What Akane needs right now is for her own wants to be put first_ ,” she had said. _“For your daughter’s sake, I’m going to have to deny your request for visitation until she says she_ wants _to see you.”_

Rantaro agrees with the sentiment – whatever Akane wants is what she should get – but he isn’t sure he understands _why_ Akane wouldn’t let her mother in to see her yet, and that worries him.

No. It _scares_ him. It’s just a confirmation of _why_ he hadn’t wanted Akane to sign up for Danganronpa in the first place – because it had changed her, definitely, with not a single doubt in his mind.

He’s just going to have to brace himself for whatever he’s going to see tomorrow – resign himself to whatever has happened to his cousin and find the best way possible to help her through her changes.

-x-

“Hey, Ran.” Akane’s voice is as tired as the expression on her face, as hollow as the bruises beneath both of her eyes. She’s paler than she was the last time he saw her in person, which just makes the vivid red of her dyed hair stand out all the more. Her darker, brunette roots are beginning to show through, and Rantaro feels some of the tension in his shoulders relax as he takes in that little bit of familiarity. “How’ve you been?”

He laughs, and takes a seat in the chair placed by her bed. “That’s a question I should be asking you,” he says. “Though I guess you might not really have an answer for me, there.”

Akane looks down at her hands, fisting in the sheets of her bed. Her knuckles are white as she twists the material, and Rantaro reaches out to cup them with his own. “No,” she says softly. “I don’t, not really. I – my memories are all mixed. I’m not actually sure I know who ‘Akane Amami’ is anymore. Am I the girl who grew up as your cousin? Or am I the Ultimate Beautician who grew up alone, in an orphanage?” Her eyes meet his, and her gaze has a desperation in it that leaves his heart beating a million miles an hour out of pure _fear_. He has _never_ seen his cousin look like that, and he isn’t quite sure how to process it, how to react to it. “That’s the reason I asked to see you first, you know,” she says. “The Ultimate Beautician was abandoned by her mother, and hated her for it for all of her life. She never had a cousin, though – so, you’re someone that the old me loves that she can’t have a real opinion on.” Her smile is slightly watery. “It’s so good to see you, Ran.”

His hands around her tighten. “The real you, Akane,” he says. “Not the old you. Who you were in the game – that’s not real. ‘She’ doesn’t really exist.”

Akane shakes her head. “Not physically,” she acknowledges, and pulls one of her hands from his to tap a finger against his temple. “But she’s here, and she always will be.”

Rantaro bites his lip. “I’m here, too,” he says impulsively. “And there’s no way I’m going anywhere.”

Akane laughs. It doesn’t take long for her chuckles to dissolve into sobs, though, and she’s throwing herself across her bed, into his arms, pushing her head into his neck and wrapping her arms tight around his shoulders.

She’s speaking, he thinks, but her words are close to utter nonsense, her voice is so choked up with sobs. It’s all he can do to hold her tight through her trembling and brush a comforting hand through her hair.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “I’m here, Akane. It’s okay.”

-x-

Akane is released with a mental and emotional health stamp of approval almost two months later – just a little bit longer than the time she had spent in the game itself.

After that first visit from Rantaro, she had gradually worked through separating reality from her implanted personality and memories. Though she’s still slightly awkward around her mother – which he knows kills both Akane and Yuriko inside – she _had_ been allowing visits from her, and was slowly mending the relationship they had shared that been broken by something out of either of their control, as well as the secrets and lies that had come before even the Danganronpa season had aired.

Her siblings are loud, and screaming in excitement as they rush out to meet her, exiting the cab that’s brought her back home to her house. Aunt Yuriko makes an aborted motion, as if to call them back – probably worried that all of them at once will overwhelm Akane – but Rantaro’s mother holds her back as Akane falls to her knees on the front lawn, weeping, pulling all of her younger siblings to her in a bear hug they all struggle to get out of.

 _Akanee_ , they're crying, and Rantaro's eyes definitely aren't stinging as he watches their reunion and fights the urge to join the huddle and tackle his cousins to the ground. Along the street, neighbours poke their heads out of their doors to see what the commotion is about, and with every new pair of eyes that turn their way, Akane tenses up.

Eventually, it gets to the point that Aunt Yuriko shakes off his mother, and heads over to her children, gently pulling the younger ones off of the eldest and helping Akane to her feet. "Let's get inside," she says, quickly letting go of Akane's arm once she's standing. "I'll bet it's already all over social media that you're back home."

Akane grimaces, and it's one of the most _her_ expressions Rantaro has seen on her face since she...came 'back,' he guesses. Her hair is mostly brown again, too, just hints of red along the bottom few inches - and she's been talking about cutting those inches right _off_ \- and she's moving and walking more and more like herself, even if she's still got that weird sashay in her hips when she walks.

It's a little relieving, to be honest, seeing Akane come back to herself like this. Those first few weeks after her awakening had been like talking to a stranger with his cousin's face and memories - disconcerting, slightly uncomfortable, and more than a little bittersweet.

"Yeah, that's gonna suck," Akane says as she pushes her siblings through the doorway before her with a grin - tugging Rantaro along with them, even as he scowls and protests. "You know what _doesn't_ suck, though? The cash prize I got for winning."

There's a promise of mischief in her eyes as she grins at Rantaro - a grin he can't tell one way or another if it's real or not - but her mother is frowning in something like vague disaproval.

"Is money really worth the trauma?" She asks softly, troubled, and a shudder travels through Akane, her smile briefly dying out before she pulls it back onto her face, brighter than ever.

"Mum, this money is going to get me through university," she says easily. "And I can assure you, _that_ is where the real trauma is going to come from." She softens, if only slightly. "And it wasn't _all_ bad in there, you know. I made friends. Friends I'll probably have for a lifetime, even if who we are now isn't who we were when we met. In the end, the positives outweigh the negatives, I think."

She's smiling as she says it, and nothing about her body language _looks_ particularly off to Rantaro - but as Aunt Yuriko smiles in return and bustles off to get the last bits of food ready for Akane's welcome home celebration, he can't help but wonder how much of what his cousin has said is the truth, and how much of it is her lying; not just to her mother, but to herself.

-x-

Over time, outside of the foreign and monitored environment of the Team Danganronpa headquarters, the changes in Akane’s personality become more apparent – not just to Rantaro, but to _everyone_ …especially Akane herself.

He isn’t sure what she feels, exactly, about who she is these days. He isn’t sure _she_ is sure. But when it comes down to it, she’s still Akane, and he still loves her just the same.

It’s kind of hard to believe that she had only been in the game for about two months, considering that it had felt like about a year, spending most of his time watching the twenty four hour streams and watching his cousin on them try to stay strong through trauma after trauma, when said traumas weren’t even real, not to anyone but those people most involved in them.

Akane was…not _quieter_ , exactly, but more – thoughtful. Introspective. She spent more time alone in her room, with her door closed to the world, than she ever had before to memory. That wasn’t to say she shut herself out completely – she was more of a presence on social media than any of the others in her ‘class’ had been so far, and the time she spent outside of her room was spent mostly in the company of others – namely her younger siblings, and Rantaro himself.

On his fifteenth birthday, she actually comes to his house before the sun is even up and literally _drags_ him out of bed. He isn’t sure how she managed to convince his mother to agree to this blatant act of cousin-on-cousin abuse, but he doesn’t even have the brain power to argue as he is, half asleep and utterly disoriented.

“Here,” Akane says, from where she stands by his closet, digging through the pile of clothes that have piled up at the bottom of it. She flings a binder and a shirt his way, and they whack him in the face before falling into the arms he instinctively raises in response to things flying at his face. Blankly, he stares down at them without comprehension before Akane walks over and places a pair of jeans atop them. “Put those on,” she continues, and he can hear the smile in her voice as she takes in his post-sleep, half unconscious, zombie state. “I’m taking you somewhere nice for your birthday.”

He grunts – barely an answer, but it’s the only response his brain is capable of thinking up at that moment. Akane leaves, probably to give him some privacy as he gets dressed, but he honestly considers just dumping his armful of clothes onto the floor and curling back up under his blankets, where it’s warm and he can sleep.

In the end, though, he figures that drawing Akane’s ire just isn’t worth the effort – the risk does not outweigh the reward, even in his sleep muddled opinion, so he sighs, and starts the slow, clumsy process of tugging his pajamas off.

He steps into his binder and tugs it up, slipping his arms through the holes and reaching down to adjust his chest into the right shape. He’ll probably have to redo it later, anyway. His eyesight is still clouded over with sleep and his room is nice and dark, courtesy of the blackout blinds he had gotten his mother to allow him to install the year before – he can’t exactly _see_ what he’s doing.

It's not like it really matters, anyway, or at least he doesn’t think so – even if he lets Akane drag him to…wherever it is she’s planning to drag him to, exactly, he’s not stepping foot outside of the house until he’s had breakfast and a good thirty minutes to become human again. He’d drink coffee if he could, but his mother is stoutly against caffeine until he’s at least eighteen.

 _It’s bad for growing boys,_ she would always say when he argued with her.

 _Well, lack of coffee is bad for my continued mental wellbeing,_ he would reply. _I need caffeine to break out of Snarling Cannibal Mode_.

She’d always end up laughing, but she never gave in to his whines. The iron will of a mother, he supposes. He’s almost envious of it – for as stubborn as he can be, he is, at heart, quite lackadaisical. If there’s an easy way out, he’ll usually take it before even considering the harder roads; why waste effort on achieving an end goal if he doesn’t actually _have_ to?

“Are you nearly done, or are you trying to find the answer to life in the thread count of your shirt?” Akane’s voice is loud, but echoing – it sounds almost as if she’s standing right next to him, but he can tell she must be at least in the kitchen, or the lounge.

“I’ve nearly cracked the code!” He yells back, and his voice is as choked up with sleep as the rest of him is. “Just give me a few hours, and I’ll have the answer all of existence has been waiting for.”

She chuckles, and Rantaro thinks he can hear his mother do so too, her laughter echoing just a few seconds behind Akane’s. “You’ve got ten minutes,” she says. “If you can’t figure it out by then, Ran, then all of existence is just going to have to wait a little longer.”

He snorts, but tugs his shirt on anyway, and staggers over to pull a jumper out of his closet before Akane comes back to his room to bodily drag him out of it – her legendary impatience, at least, is one thing that hasn’t changed about her at all. It’s just a plain black knit, so he figures that it can’t be too out of dress code to whatever his cousin has planned. He’s always been particularly sensitive to temperature, and he refuses to leave the house in nothing but a t-shirt.

When he finally makes his way to the kitchen with minimal injury, breakfast is ready and waiting for him. His mother hands him a mug, and he cups his hands around it, trying to draw in the warmth. He takes a sip, and it isn’t coffee, but hot chocolate is pretty much the next best thing, as far as he’s concerned.

Rantaro sits down, careful of the hot drink in his hands, and buries his consciousness into his mug before turning his attention to his cereal. When he looks up, Akane is smiling at him, in a way that makes him distinctly nervous.

“So, what is it you’re planning?” He asks warily, and her smile widens.

“Part of being a cast member in Danganronpa is getting several perks in the outside world once your season is over,” she says. “I have a lifetime worth of free visits to Hope’s Peak.” Her eyes sparkle as Rantaro perks up. “You interested in being my tour buddy?”


End file.
